WEAVING THROUGH THE LABYRINTH: Emerging from a Traumatic Brain Injury

By Ginger A Theisen

Ginger Theisen's memoir gives you a glimpse into her journey of recovery from a traumatic brain injury caused by a horse accident. The experience is not something anyone can fully comprehend, but from her point of view, it will help people understand what it was like with more clarity. Each day brought new challenges, but recovery instilled the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Platte River Publishing
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735648415

Ginger A Theisen

Ginger Theisen grew up in a small town in northeast Nebraska with a strong sense of curiosity that has guided her throughout her life. Horses played a significant role starting at an early age until high school. Then her interest shifted to film as an art form inspired by the independent and foreign films she watched at the Sheldon Art Museum in Lincoln. This experience sparked her desire to pursue a career in film. After graduating from high school in 1973, she lived in Paris and worked as an au pair, returning to the United States a year later to study film at Syracuse University in upstate New York graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and Film. Eventually, she got a job on the camera crew at Nebraska Educational Television (NET), a PBS affiliate. Then moved into an associate producer position in the Cultural Affairs Unit. In late summer of 1989, she and her son moved to California where she freelanced in the San Francisco Bay area. A year later she got a job at George Lucas's visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). She moved through the ranks starting as a production assistant to a production coordinator and to a visual effects producer. During her fifteen years at ILM, she worked with an extraordinary talented group of people to create ground breaking visual effects on several films including Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, The Perfect Storm and A.I Artificial Intelligence. She left ILM in 2005 to freelance as a visual effects producer until 2012 when her career shifted to the creative side after optioning the film script Crazy Horse based on the life of the Lakota warrior. This prompted a move back to Nebraska to develop the film. At the same time, she worked on the Crazy Horse Ride documentary, filming the ride in June of 2013. Two months later, she traveled to Guyana with two other filmmakers to work with the Witness Project high school students to write, produce, direct and act in their first short film Rebecca's Story. When she returned to Nebraska the beginning of September, work continued on the Crazy Horse Ride documentary and the feature film. A week later, she went horseback riding at Mount Michael Benedictine Abbey with one of the monks, Brother Mel. This was on September 12, 2013. They saddled up the horses and left the paddock when the horse slipped and fell, landing on top of her. The journey through her recovery from a traumatic brain injury is in this book, bringing a sense of closure to that chapter of her life, ready to fully embrace the next chapter.

Book preview

1.png

Weaving through the labyrinth

Emerging from a Traumatic Brain Injury

Weaving through the labyrinth

Emerging from a Traumatic Brain Injury

A Memoir

Ginger Theisen

Walking the labyrinth is a spiritual discipline that invites us to trust the path, to surrender to the many turns our lives take, and to walk through the confusion, the fear, the anger, and grief that we cannot avoid experiencing as we live our earthly lives.

Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress

Published by

Platte River Publishing

Omaha, Nebraska

Weaving Through the Labyrinth Copyright © 2020 by Ginger Theisen.

All rights reserved by the author.

ISBN: 978-1-7356484-0-8 (paperback edition)

978-1-7356484-1-5 (eBook edition)

BISAC codes:

BIO026000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

BIO022000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women

BIO017000 BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Medical (incl. Patients)

Cover and logo design and author photo by Angel Stottle

Cover photo by Christine Lesiak

Interior photographs provided by Ginger Theisen

Printed in the United States of America by

Lincoln, Nebraska

To my sweet dear son, Nolan.

Acknowledgments

Through these last seven years since the horse accident, I have been on a journey of healing and self-discovery enriched by the love and generosity of my family, friends and new acquaintances.

I want to thank my family; Nolan, Mark, Trish, John and Robin, for always being there through all the twists and turns during my recovery.

When I was able to physically write a couple of words and eventually compose a sentence, I started to keep a journal about what I was experiencing. This evolved into the first chapter of this book which helped me work through this significant event in my life. I am incredibly grateful to my therapist Becky, who helped guide me through it, encouraging me to continue writing which opened up and connected parts of my life that had been blocked after the traumatic brain injury.

To steer me through the process of turning this into a book, I want to thank Doug Erlandson for his wise and knowledgeable advice and helping me pull this together. Also, many thanks to the following people who helped get this book to the finish line: Trish Billotte for proofreading, Fr. Thomas at St. Benedict Center in Schuyler, Nebraska for giving us access to their labyrinth, Christine Lesiak for taking the photographs of me walking the labyrinth, my niece, Angel Stottle for designing the cover of the book and Dr. William Thorell and Dr. Richard Legge for proofing the medical terminology. Also, I want to thank Mikala Harden, his company Say Hi There and the photographer, Nate Gasaway, for the drone shot of the labyrinth from the St. Benedict Center video.

1

Pieces to the Puzzle

On a beautiful warm September day in 2013, I went horseback riding on the lovely grounds of Mt. Michael Abbey, with one of the Benedictine monks, Brother Mel. We had just started out on our ride when my horse slipped and fell, taking me with her, all 1,350 pounds, landing right on top of me. The horse got up, but I did not.

Eventually, family and friends told me the rest of the story. I was taken to the emergency room at a hospital in the nearby city of Omaha, Nebraska. It is quite a strange experience to find out much later on that you have no memory of what happened. I was in pretty bad shape with a traumatic brain injury. They decided to put me in an induced coma, expecting me to come out of it in a couple of days. Several days went by, and the tests showed I had no brain activity. The doctors told my family I was not coming back.

Based on this information, my family was asked to make a big decision, whether or not to keep me plugged in to the equipment keeping me alive. In fact, I had just created a medical power of attorney a couple of months earlier, appointing my son to serve in that capacity. In the document, I specifically addressed the situation I was now in. I did not want to be kept alive if there were no positive signs I was going to make it. This is not an easy decision for anyone to make, and I still cannot fathom how heavily this must have weighed on him, my family, and friends. This all unfolded in a very short period of time from my son hearing I was in an induced managed coma to learning I was likely not going to wake up. Given the doctor’s newfound grim prognosis and my wishes to not be kept in a vegetative state, my son decided to take me off life support.

The day before this was going to happen, Nolan had let my closest friends know, garnering all kinds of emotional responses. He, along with family, my niece Angel, who was flying in from Chicago, and friends who were close by came to the hospital to say their goodbyes, all of them thinking this was it. However, when Angel was still in flight to Omaha, I gently squeezed the finger of Dr. Matanaj, the neurosurgeon, the faintest of signs for him to witness some activity, indicating that there was still hope for me. This small, simple gesture was a game-changer. The doctor firmly believed I should be kept on life support, giving me a chance. He did not need to be told twice.

From that point, it was a slow and unsure emergence out of the coma. My son and niece wondered openly how far I would actually come, where the progress would stop. None of the doctors had an answer—no one knew. But sure enough, day by day, there were small encouraging improvements—from squeezing to making tiny movements with my right hand, my left foot, my right foot, and eyes tracking from side to side. A miracle was unfolding before everyone around me. I have no memory of any of this.

Everyone was watching to see how I would come out of it; the signs continued to be positive. Lots of things started happening, and big decisions had to be made quickly. I had several broken bones on the right side of my face and a broken clavicle. The surgery for my face was done pretty quickly after I came out of the coma, so it was a risky decision for my son to make, but it was definitely the right one. The plastic surgeon, Dr. Bhuller, repaired the broken bones around my right eye, basically putting them back together again.

One would think coming out of a coma is like flipping a switch back on and—presto— you are back among the living. But for me or anyone who has had brain trauma, it does not work that way. Essentially, it scrambles the neurons in your brain, and you have to figure out how to unscramble them. It is not a simple or easy process, but it’s amazing how it can and does happen.

The brain is complex and capable of healing in ways that are remarkable. My thought processes in the beginning of this adventure came back in snippets of awareness, quite disjointed and frenetic. I was still trying to figure out details of where I was and how I had gotten there. My sense of time was nonexistent.

Instinctually I knew my focus was to find out how and what was needed to help me return to this world. Some things started to come back more easily than others, but I had to relearn pretty much everything. I could usually visualize what a conversation was about, but the part of connecting it all together was challenging. The social filter was nonexistent, so sometimes I was very direct or blunt when I was able to respond. Add to the mix how to pronounce a word or its correct spelling was overwhelming at times. All of these things take time and a lot of patience to sink into your brain again. I am living proof. It will and does come back.

Since the accident, I have been in recovery, improving in big and small ways, always surrounded by loving, supportive family and friends. Now I am ready to tell you the story about the journey I have been on, discovering who I was and who I am now.

Two years after the accident, I started to write about the seemingly uncharted territory I was navigating through to get back to me. Updates in italics were added as I regained more awareness and understood the details of what was going on. A small amount of editing has been done, but mainly, this is a clear reflection of my thought process and point of view. I hope this gives the reader a glimpse into what it was like to recover from a traumatic brain injury.

This is my story from the beginning.

I remember two faces looking at me. The first one was Abbot Michael in deep prayer. Somehow I knew the prayer was for me and that the situation was not good. The second face I saw had a warm, motherly glow. It was Angel, who was very pregnant at the time; she was smiling at me. I do not know when these took place, but it was at the hospital because that is when they both came to see me.

Two years later, Angel told me when they decided to move me from Creighton Hospital to the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, she asked me if I wanted to be back in Paris instead and I quickly nodded, yes and shot her a look that was indicative of me. It was a place I had been many times before and loved it. My response showed her a lot because a week earlier I had just come out of a coma and had plastic surgery done on my face. But this response was a really good sign; several parts of my brain were functioning and intact.

This was around the time I was ready to hear more stories about what happened while I was at Creighton Hospital. My family and friends told me that when I was in the coma, they spent time talking to me, reading articles from the New York Times and verses from the Bible and looking at photos, describing what we were doing, hoping to engage me. Being surrounded by this kind of love, prayers, and support is amazingly powerful and had to be a part of bringing me out of the coma. There were people from all over the world praying for me, some of them I have never met. My family told me that when I came out of the coma, I was aware and coherent, having brief conversations with them. I do not remember any of this.

Then I was wheeled down a hallway with a nurse next to me. I told her my feet were cold. I think they were taking me to a vehicle to be transported somewhere else. The next thing I remember was lying on something, hearing the sound of tires hitting pavement. I felt movement. It seemed like I was by myself; I had no sense of time.

Nolan told me this was when I had been released from Creighton Hospital and transported to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. He and Angel were in my VW Jetta following the ambulance and were there when they checked me in. I have no recollection of this.

Maybe this memory was soon after they had checked me in, but I remember lying on a bed in a room. People came in to check on me. I followed the light and saw it was coming from the window. Looking further, I saw a street with trees and parked cars. Then it began to dawn on me I had no idea where I was or why I was there. No sounds, just glimpses of movements, visually perceiving what was around me in that room.

I do not remember much about the first couple of weeks at Madonna. Much later on, my friend Kim told me she had visited me soon after I had arrived. The nurses asked me who that was. I did not respond right away. Kim was about to speak for me, but the nurses asked her to wait for me to say something. After a few minutes I said, This is my friend Kim. She started crying and called Shelley on her cell phone and handed it to me. I said, Hi Shelley Bell, my nickname for her. They were both crying at this point. I still do not remember any of it.

Pieces of reality continued to come back to me in brief snippets. I was moved into another room. I think this was when things started to click in my brain with more clarity. I was aware of my daily schedule, which meant a female nurse’s aide helped me bathe, brush my teeth, and get dressed in a pair of loose pants and top. One of the priests came by to give me communion right before they brought my breakfast.

Next was physical and speech therapy. I always felt better when I went to the gym to work out.

I have a vivid memory of being in a small room with the speech therapist, who was showing me images on a piece of paper, asking me to choose one set and describe them. The whole thing seemed odd to me. I knew in my mind what they were, but I did not know how to verbalize it and got frustrated. My mind seemed to travel to distant places outside that room.

A couple times a week I attended group sessions with the counselor. It was probably my first meeting when she explained to the rest of the group that the reason my voice sounded different was because I still had the tracheostomy